With just one day left in open enrollment, companies turn to Stride Health for help

The compressed timelines of this year's open enrollment period for government-mandated healthcare have left some companies in the lurch, and as the final hours to enroll tick by, they've turned to the startup company Stride Health for help.

Stride manages a number of different tax and healthcare-related information for customers, including Uber, Etsy, Postmates, TaskRabbit, Instacart, DoorDash, Care.com and Homebase.

Now a clutch of other gig economy companies, like Fiverr, Dribbble, Bonsai, HoneyBook, Samaschool and Wonolo have signed up for the service -- and the motivating factor is healthcare, according to chief executive Noah Lang.

“The government is spending less this year to promote the importance of having health insurance, so these companies have taken it upon themselves to make sure people get covered,” said Lang, Stride's co-founder and chief executive, in a statement.

Indeed, many of the recent additions to Stride's customer base signed up in the last two weeks to ensure that they could help the freelancers on their platforms get the healthcare coverage they need.

Since its launch four years ago, Stride has built a reputation as the easiest way to find affordable healthcare plans and subsidies that reduce the price of coverage.

Earlier this year the company raised $23.5 million, according to Crunchbase, and is using that money to expand beyond just healthcare into additional services for gig economy workers. For instance, the company is partnering with H&R Block on tax issues, and Willis Towers Watson partnered with Stride to help its clients serve their contingent workforces.

Stride makes its money by referring gig workers to coverage, getting a cut of the insurance fees that those workers pay.

The company provides its customers with co-branded websites, emails and in-product prompts to encourage the independent contractors pitching services on these websites to get their healthcare coverage.

Getting covered is vitally important, and the Affordable Care Act opened up the possibility of coverage to millions of Americans who otherwise wouldn't have it. While the current administration is doing everything it can to dismantle those healthcare protections, they can only do so much. For now, the coverage guarantees remain and it's worth it for folks to take advantage of them.

So for anyone who's interested, here's a link to the assets.

“While we work closely with our partners to build co-branded experiences for their audiences, we want to make it easy for any organization to encourage their community to get the coverage they need, so we’re providing a kit of assets -- banners, emails and other visuals -- that any organization can use to message to their users,” said Lang.

It's been a busy year for Stride Health . In addition to its partnerships, it's also launched dental and vision care consulting plans and has expanded the number of folks who've received coverage through the Stride platform to more than 10 million individuals this year.